


two becomes three

by kittymills



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Kid Fic, M/M, Mpreg, Post Season 7, SHEITH - Freeform, Work In Progress, allurance, allurance kids, allurance son, happy ending ofc, not my usual thing but i needed this out of my system, s8 doesn't happen, sheith daughter - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-05
Updated: 2019-04-11
Packaged: 2019-07-07 08:10:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 12,890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15904329
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kittymills/pseuds/kittymills
Summary: In the aftermath of Shiro's return to the clone body, Keith's galra side means something unexpected happens.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Seiteki9](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Seiteki9/gifts).



> S8 doesn't happen. Welcome to my Kasumi AU

“It doesn’t make sense,” Shiro murmurs, staring out over the courtyard, the lions standing regal in the distance. Silent, watching. Waiting. “How can there be two?”

Krolia gazes at him with expression he can’t read. She’s not like Keith, her ability to school the planes of her face into something devoid of expression is unbearably intimidating. To anyone else, it would be terrifying, but to Shiro, it almost feels like reproach.

“I’m sure I don’t need to explain that process to you,” she answers quietly.

Shiro’s cheeks burn. “No, ah. No I mean… I’m male, Keith is male.”

Krolia’s eyes glitter. Shiro sees Keith in her eyes the most. “He’s also half galra. And we… are different.”

Shiro swallows back the ache in his throat and his still human hand twitches with the need to touch the man lying silent on the hospital bed between them. The monitor beeps softly, two heartbeats pulsing away but still, he doesn’t wake up.

The battle has been won, but Keith is still fighting for more than just himself.

 

* * *

 

_The black lion’s cargo hold is a cold space, or maybe it’s just that Shiro hasn’t felt warmth in so long that he craves it desperately. He shivers, tugging the blanket tighter around his shoulders. A blanket that smells like Keith, that still carries the echo of his warmth and he gasps at the flash of pain that shoots through his mind._

_It’s a memory, a hand on Keith’s shoulder, a swell of affection, a softly spoken_ I’m proud of you _._

_It’s a memory, but it’s not his._

_His human hand fists into his hair and he pulls against the now silver strands with a sharp yank. It’s still pain, but it’s a different kind, one that’s quantifiable. It drives out his demon, at least for a little while._

 

* * *

When Keith wakes up, it’s Krolia that tells him.

Shiro lingers in the corner of the room, head bowed as Krolia answers Keith’s soft questions. He doesn’t swear or panic, just lays back against the pillows. Thoughtful.

Krolia tilts her head as she watches him. “But you already knew.”

Did he? He wasn’t sure. But he’d felt something, something different he couldn’t explain. Something he was driven to protect.

The swell of his body is hard to hide, so they don’t.

The questions come. The sideways looks. The whispers. But they’re busy. The rebuilding takes a long time and there is so much to coordinate, so much that needs his attention or Shiro’s.

Gestation for galra goes faster than for humans and a natural delivery isn’t feasible. Keith’s body isn’t strong enough to hold it, the human side to him unable to cope with the drain and the baby is transferred to an artificial womb.  A fifty- fifty chance of survival they tell him.

He spends what hours he can beside the crib, watching his child sleep and dream and grow in the purplish liquid she floats in. 

A girl. Soft and perfect.

Shiro visits too but Keith doesn’t care for the look on his face, the pinched haunting like he wants to be sick. She’s not entirely human, but then neither is Keith, and Keith has long since moved past being repulsed. 

How can he be when something so innocent and pure and beautiful is the result?

“We should name her,” he says one day. One rare day that finds them there standing by the crib at the same time. It’s the most they’ve spoken in weeks. It’s sad, the distance between them. They’ve created something lovely but they barely talk at all. Keith doesn’t have the energy to fight it.

“Any ideas?” Shiro asks.

“What was your mother’s name?”

Shiro is silent for a moment. “Kasumi.”

The twist against his chest makes him wonder if the universe is laughing at him. He laughs, but it has a faintly bitter edge.

“What’s so funny?”

He stares at the dark hair forming around her head, floating like a cloud in the amniotic fluid that cradles her. It looks almost purple, like her galra grandmother.  “Nothing,” Keith says quietly.  “Kasumi is perfect.”

 

* * *

 

_Shiro leans into Keith, anxious to feel the smooth skin of his body pressed against his own. He was starting to get used to it now, to thinking of this body as his. It feels different to his original form, it doesn’t carry the disease deep in its atoms, this one is pure._

_Pure but still not whole._

_He still wakes panting in the night sometime, the memory replaying in his mind of the blade slicing through the galra part of him. He remembers the instant clarity when it was gone, and the bone crushing horror that followed it._

_And he remembers the way Keith had looked at him._

_“Keith,” Shiro whispers in the dark. It’s only them in here now, Krolia outside standing watch like she always does during the sunlit nights on this planet. There’s a shift and then he feels Keith’s warm breath against his cheek._

_“Shiro?”_

_“Keith,” he says again and something claws inside him. Something desperate and yearning that feels like only Keith can save. Is that him? Or was it the clone? Shiro isn’t sure but he’s tired of fighting it. So tired. “Keith, make me feel alive again. Please.”_

 

* * *

 

Shiro feels oddly like an intruder in the room when they perform the birth from the artificial womb. They lift her out and place her immediately against Keith’s bare chest and her wail is as strong and as vibrant as Keith himself.

Shiro almost staggers against the weight of that sound but he takes one step, two steps towards it, compelled by something so powerful inside him he can’t name.

“She’s incredible,” Keith says, eyes wet when Shiro falls to his knees in wonder at his side.

And she is. Tiny and fierce and the very best of them.

 

* * *

 

_Shiro doesn’t let himself think beyond the sensations that skitter across his skin, of the way Keith feels so soft and yielding against him. They move together with a rhythm he doesn’t recognize but his body does, and there are flickers behind his eyes of Keith naked and slick with sweat that are familiar and foreign all at once._

_He doesn’t pause to examine the strange twist of jealousy that rises up like a tendril of smoke inside him. He doesn’t understand its origin, if it’s him or the clone and he doesn’t care._

_Keith sighs under him as Shiro slides home, and he doesn’t let go for a long time after._

 

* * *

 

Krolia cradles her grandchild in her arms, a bottle to Kasumi’s lips. Her eyes are so soft Keith almost doesn’t recognize her. She gazes down at the baby with such warmth and fierce devotion it tickles at the edge of his memories.

Then he remembers.

“I saw you like this when we were in the quantum abyss,” he says quietly. “Next to dad. With me.”

Krolia doesn’t raise her head but the smile is unmistakable. “Yes,” she says tenderly. A moment passes, quiet with only Kasumi’s soft snuffles to hear. “I wish he could have met her.”

Keith swallows. “Me too.”

 

* * *

 

_“I don’t understand,” Keith says, an edge to his voice that cuts deep. There’s pain there, pain that’s reflected back in Shiro’s own heart._

_“It’s the best thing for the team,” Shiro says quietly. He wills Keith to understand. He doesn’t want to fight. He doesn’t want to do anything but lock the cargo doors and curl up in Keith’s lap forever._

_Which is why he has to do this._

_“What about what’s best for you?” Keith demands harshly. His fist clenches at his side and his voice is dangerously low. The wolf raises his head, sniffing at the air before he tosses his head and lowers it back down._

_“It’s not about me.”_

_“Maybe it should be.”_

_“Keith,” Shiro shakes his head. “Please,” he begs. “Please don’t fight me on this. It’s better this way. I’m going to ride with Pidge until we get back to Earth, okay. That’s final.”_

_Keith looks at him in a way that makes him want to die all over again. “Yes, sir.”_

 

* * *

 

It takes Shiro a long time to adjust to being a father.

He’d been shot halfway through the universe, he’d died and come back to life, he was infused with the magic of an ancient civilization but it was trying to wrap his wriggling baby daughter that was to be his undoing.

“Honey, please,” he says in exasperation. She coos up at him with eyes that look a lot like his. She has Keith’s jaw though, the pointed chin Shiro has always been so fond of. He’s glad for that. “You have to work with me here.”

She flails her tiny arms in response. If he didn’t know better, he would suspect she’s mocking him.

“Don’t tell me the Captain of the Atlas can’t do something as simple as getting his daughter ready for bed,” Keith says from behind him.  There’s a lightness to his tone that tells Shiro he’s trying to hold back a laugh.

Shiro lifts his head. “No matter what I do, she gets her arms out and wakes herself up.” He gives Keith a pointed look that speaks volumes about the new kind of comradery they’ve found. “She must get that from you.”

Keith’s lips curve at that. Not quite a laugh, but the twitch is there. “I would offer to help but now I’m not feeling so generous.”

Shiro chuckles. He lifts Kasumi up and cradles her against his human shoulder where it’s still soft skin and not hard, glowing metal. There’s a soft wave of something warm that spreads over him. Something that tastes a bit like hope.

“What are you doing here anyway? I thought it was my night?”

Keith meets his gaze. There’s a resolve there that Shiro hasn’t seen since the lions fell to earth. He tries to tamper down the leap of his heart.

“What if we made it _our_ night?”

Shiro’s breath catches in his throat and his eyes prick. “I’d like that.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> sooo, uh... apparently continuing this when i actually wasn't expecting to

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> different style but same fic

There are stranger things that the people of Earth have seen now than the sight of the leader of Voltron or the Captain of the Atlas walking the halls or working through a meeting with a small, snuffling bundle attached to their chest.

Keith is as fiercely protective of his daughter as he is of Shiro, but he finds it easier to channel his protectiveness into actual action when it comes to Kasumi.

“Lance, what are you doing?” Keith mutters dryly. He holds his baby girl to his shoulder while he juggles a datapad with his free hand. The meeting room is emptying now, just himself and Shiro and the rest of the paladins left behind and Kosmo under the table at his feet.

“She’s awake,” Lance informs him cheerily and then there’s a funny little sound from the blue paladin.

Keith raises an eyebrow. “Well if she wasn’t before, I’m sure she is now.”

Lance smirks and Keith stands up. He catches sight of Lance’s hands twitching and a small smile on his lips.  Keith knows what’s coming next.

“Come on,” Lance cajoles. “Let me hold her. I can’t even remember my niece and nephew this size. I miss it.”

“What size?” Keith grumbles. “She’s not that small.”

Lance gives him a flat look. “Newborn size, you idiot.”

“Oh.”

“Besides, with Krolia and Shiro’s genes, she’s gonna end up being an amazon, aren’t you, cutie? Yes, you are.”

Lance makes a kissy face at the baby and she blinks up at him with wide owlish eyes.

Then she giggles.

Keith’s eyes go wide. The entire room goes silent around him for a beat, then all the chatter crowds in at once.

“Did she just-“

“No way-“

“Seriously?”

“Was that a laugh?” Shiro asks. 

Keith stares down at his daughter.

“I… I think it was.”

“Come on, Keith. She clearly likes me so hand her over. Stop hogging the baby.”

Something about the way Lance says it makes him laugh in spite of himself and when he looks up, he tries to catch Shiro’s eye, only to find Shiro is already gazing at him with an expression he can’t quite read.

It’s soft though. It’s soft enough that Keith wishes they were more than co-parents, more than co-leaders. This feels like a moment they should celebrate, maybe as an actual couple.

The thought leaves a tiny little scratch along his heart but he can’t dwell on it because Lance is holding his arms out for his daughter.

A few months ago, he might have hesitated but if he trusts Lance to have his back climbing through galra infested rubble with drones at his back, well, then he can surely trust him with his daughter too.

With another quick glance at Shiro for approval, he lays Kasumi in Lance’s arms and steps back, already torn between relief to have a moment to breathe and both his hands free, and a strange kind of guilt that she’s with someone else when she belonged to him.

His responsibility.

“You know, if you and Shiro want to chill and have some non-daddy time, we can look after Kasumi for a few hours,” Lance says. He’s wiggling his finger and Kasumi snatches it with her chubby fist. “Between me and Hunk and Pidge, I’m sure we can entertain her for a few hours.”

“Not me,” Pidge squeaks then from the side. “I am _not_ good with babies.”  She looks sheepishly at Keith and fiddles with her glasses. “Uh, no… no offence.”

“None taken,” Keith answers. “I’m not either.”

“Oh please, you’re a natural,” Lance tells him and Keith has to look twice at him to gauge if he’s joking or not.

He’s not.

“Babies are fun,” Hunk says then. He shuffles over and peers over Lance’s shoulder. Kasumi is immediately charmed by the funny faces he pulls for her. “But Lance and I have got this. Hey, maybe Lance can show his baby wrangling skills to Allura, eh?”

Lance’s expression shifts into horror and he makes a show of covering the baby’s ears and hissing. “Shut up, Hunk!”

Hunk chuckles and tugs Pidge over, only for her to stare at Kasumi as though the baby might suddenly grow tentacles and snatch her datapad.  Keith tries not to laugh out loud at the thought. His daughter is part alien after all.

“Seriously though,” Lance turns to Shiro then. “You guys should take some time off, hang out. Catch up… I dunno, whatever it is that you guys did before you had Kasumi, well, except, maybe that, because I dunno if a sibling so soon is a good idea with all that we still have to do and Lotor still out there-“

“Lance,” Shiro clears his throat loudly. Keith can’t bring himself to check if his cheeks are pink.

“Right, well, we’ll see you in a few hours.”

They’re gone, taking Kosmo with them, before Keith has a chance to really absorb what’s happened. It feels so abruptly strange to be alone with Shiro without their daughter occupying the space between them.

Their daughter.

It still feels strange to say, even after these past three months of a needy infant. Between himself and Shiro and his mother, they were muddying their way through the unexpected challenge of parenthood being forced upon them.

Kasumi, for all her human genes, still carried a good deal of galra physiology and even something as simple as feeding her was a challenge. Krolia’s experience with Keith as a baby had proven invaluable, even if Keith found his stomach churning at the thought of mixing a bone broth in with her formula. It had worked though, from the early days when they’d been worried she wouldn’t even survive let alone thrive, but now she was healthy and strong.

She was a link and a barrier to everything Keith’s heart ever wanted too.

“So, I guess it’s just us for a while, huh?” Shiro smiles at him from across the room. It’s a soft smile, made radiant by the way the silver of his hair catches the light. Shiro seems to smile a lot more these days, no small feat considering the traumas he’s been through. Perhaps it was his position at the helm of the Atlas, perhaps it was an Earth free of the Galra, perhaps it was the way his daughter gurgles up at him when he’s blowing a raspberry on her tummy.

Keith doesn’t kid himself to think it’s perhaps because of him too.

“Yeah I guess so. Think they’ll be okay?”

“I’ve seen Lance and Hunk with their nephews, she’s in good hands.”

“Hmm. Guess so.”

A moment of silence passes. It feels heavy. Heavier than it should and Keith wonders if they’re going to have to face all the things they haven’t had the chance to talk about yet. He’s not sure if he’s ready.

“So,” Shiro clears his throat and offers Keith a small smile as he approaches Keith’s side. He pauses a few steps away, a datapad in his human hand. “These numbers are looking good. We should be able to see some real progress in the next few weeks.”

Keith shakes his head. “I don’t want to talk about this stuff now. Not when we only have a few hours to ourselves.”

“Okay,” Shiro says slowly.  “What do you want to talk about?”

It takes a few beats longer than it should for Keith to draw in a breath and raise his eyes to Shiro.

“Not sure I really want to talk either.”

It’s hard to ignore the sudden churning of his gut at the words that fall out of his mouth. It’s probably the wrong thing to say, in fact, he’s sure it’s probably the most wrong thing he can consider at this point, especially in light of Lance’s comment earlier.

Shiro watches him warily. “What do you want then?”

Keith’s blood suddenly rushes loud in his ears. There’s a hundred reasons why it would be a bad idea but his heart tells him a hundred more why it would. His heart was loud. Loud enough it kept him awake at night. Loud enough he’s tired of replaying the same memories over in his head, of the moment Shiro slid inside him, of realising the reason he had been feeling strange, of the first time he’d felt a flutter under his ribs and new it came from something new and beautiful and made from love and starlight.

He raises his eyes and meets Shiro’s gaze.

“I want you to kiss me.”

The instant the words fall out of his mouth, he expects to be rebuffed. There are more important things that need doing, the world needs rebuilding, there are strategies to discuss, there are things that are so much more important than this right now, but Keith wants to be selfish. Just for a little while. Just for a moment, he wants to close his eyes and imagine that after everything, they’re a family.

He expects Shiro to put duty first, but he surprises him.

He steps forward, moving into Keith’s space before Keith even has a moment to understand what’s happening, and then Shiro’s lips are on his, his hands cupping the side of Keith’s cheeks gently. His new hand is so different to his galra hand, it’s larger and smoother and it hums in a way the other one never did, but Keith finds himself leaning into it anyway.

Shiro’s tongue traces the seam of his lips and Keith opens his mouth on a sigh and welcomes Shiro home. It’s a galaxy and a war since the last time they’d kissed but it feels like no time at all. They slide together in a familiar rhythm and Keith chases the taste of him, arms reaching up to curl around Shiro’s neck, right there in the command centre, the bright orange screen dominating the wall behind them.

He can see the glow behind his eyes, but all he can feel is Shiro.

It feels like eons when Shiro pulls back. Keith almost forgets how to breath, the air choppy in his lungs.  Shiro presses his forehead against Keith’s whispers a word Keith doesn’t understand. He’s dazed and weak from the kiss and he wonders how he’s managed to live for so long without it.

“Lance makes a good point though,” Shiro says quietly after a moment. “I’m not ready for Kasumi to have a sibling.”

Keith snorts, a rueful chuckle rising up and falling out of his chest. “You’re not ready? I wasn’t ready the first time.  Two years on a space whale in the quantum abyss and mom never thought to warn me I could get knocked up.”

Shiro brushes a thumb over his lip before it travels over his cheekbone. His eyes go dark, a little pensive.

“I never thought I’d ever be a parent,” Shiro confesses finally and it takes a little moment before the implication behind his words fully sinks in for Keith. “The disease… I just assumed it would never happen.  I hope-”

“She doesn’t have it,” Keith tells him with a low voice.  “They checked when she was born.”

“Thank god,” Shiro murmurs and his body seems to sag a little in relief. “I’m glad.”

There’s a single moment of hesitation before Keith slips his arms around Shiro’s waist and presses his forehead to the centre of his chest.  He wants to get out of this room before someone finds them, before they’re dragged to another meeting neither of them want anything to do with.

There’s a lot he wants to say. _I love you, I need you, I want you._ But the words don’t come.

Shiro offers him a small smile. Small and sweet and directly at odds to the hungry way he’d possessed Keith’s mouth just a short time ago. He looks younger with the silver strands all over now, an odd thought in itself and it must show in his face when Shiro raises an eyebrow.

“What is it?”

Keith drags his eyes away, faintly embarrassed to be caught staring. “Nothing.”

Shiro makes a sound like a small hum that smacks of disbelief but also that he’s not going to challenge Keith anyway.

“So, do you want to get out of here?”

Keith eyes the hand that Shiro holds out to him.  “Where do you want to go?”

“What about a date?”


	3. Kasumi: Legacy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Timeskip to the future when Kasumi is older and her parents are missing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been in a major writing slump & this is my attempt to just... get something out. I really didn't plan on doing anything with this AU but the fucking thing won't leave me the hell alone so here goes nothing.

She is used to the stares and the whispers. They’ve plagued her all her life, trailing after her like ghostly tendrils, hooking in to the back of her spine wherever she walked. They were weighty in their expectation, invisible in their demands.

 _Ignore them_ , her father would whisper with a steady palm on her shoulder.

 _Fuck them,_ her papa would smile and then wink, a private moment only they shared.

And she would straighten her shoulders and lift her pointed chin, sharp like her papa’s and follow them down the corridors of Earth’s most important defensive stronghold in the depths of space.

The only child of a marriage that saved the universe, the beloved daughter of the Captain of the Atlas and his husband, the Leader of Voltron, and granddaughter of one of the highest-ranking Blades.

Her pedigree was impeccable.

It weighed on her now, the pull of their legacy at her shoulders.

But she would not bow.

She would not break.

She was born of fire and sky and in their absence, she would rain down hellfire to get her parents back.

* * *

 

After eighteen years, Lance should be used to seeing Shiro’s eyes in Keith’s face.

But it’s jarring, even after all this time. Kasumi has all of Keith’s fire but she has all of Shiro’s eerie calm too. She’s a wild thing honed tight, the galra in her surprisingly strong considering its dilution. Perhaps it was having her grandmother close as she grew or perhaps it was just the way galra genetics worked, but she was lethal in a way Keith had never been.

Or at least in a way Lance had considered himself lucky to never have seen.

“Dad, you have to let her try.”

The whispered voice comes from the space at his elbow, soft and only for his ears despite the echoing reaches of the Black lion’s hangar. Lance has the dip and sway of a memory, of standing here in this same position but on the castle ship, the Black lion listing weakly on its side.

Silent and immobile.

He had hoped to never see it like this again.

“Keith would kill me,” he says, surprised at the agonizing way the words lay in his voice. “He never wanted that for her.”

“But they’re gone,” the voice says again. The voice, oddly more like his mothers than his, belonging to his eldest son. Lance drags his gaze away from the lion and faces his child.

No, no longer a child. A man now. Alfor was a full two years older than Lance himself had been the first day he’d walked into the blue lion’s cockpit and fell onto a path that would change the course of the universe.

“We don’t know that, Al” Lance says but the words are by rote. It’s been months now. So many months it’s almost an Earth year. All that time waiting for a sign, waiting with hope that somehow, some way, they had survived.

“But the lion might know something,” Al presses. He carries a determined glint to his eye that Lance knows from experience he’s already been defeated by. Too much like his mother. Too much strength in his human altean genes that Lance needed to scramble to catch up.

Lance pulls his eyes away from his son and turns back to the young woman standing silent in front of the downed lion. It looked much the same it had all those years ago, when it had been Keith standing there instead.

The lions might be almost indestructible… but a human heart didn’t even come close.

* * *

It’s the fear that climbs up her throat that chokes her.

It’s thick and heavy even as she rails at herself for the weakness. She holds her papa’s helmet under one arm, the red one he’d refused to give up even a new one had been offered to him. It’s the one he’d been wearing when they drove the Galra’s forces away from earth, when he’d jumped from the sky and struck down Sendak and saved her father. She knew it would fit her, their builds were close to identical but she had drawn the line at his paladin armour. Something about that felt too final, as though it would be admitting the truth the coalition brass kept trying to force feed her.

_No one could have survived._

_They’re gone._

_I’m sorry, Kasumi._

She had refused to believe it then and she refused to believe it now. Her father had died once and came back, her papa had loved him too ferociously to let him go and she loved them both with equal fierceness. Death didn’t mean what it did to the Shiroganes as it did to others. It didn’t hold the power it thought it did. She had been raised on the stories, on the quiet tales from her father of how his husband, her fierce darkhaired papa, had saved him.

How they had saved each other… and the universe.

She had been raised on those tales, she thrived on them but she had also been privy to the quiet moments between them too.  Private moments that belonged only to those closest to them when the vestiges of their rank and office and responsibilities fell away. When they were simply Shiro and Keith, her parents that loved each other with everything they had.

And they’d also loved her.

It was the kind of love that spanned the universe. That spanned time and multiple threads of reality.

That defied death itself.

A new set of footsteps echo in the chamber but Kasumi doesn’t look away from the lion. She doesn’t need to look to know who it is, she can feel Allura’s aura like a calming wave as she approaches. She’s all warm tones overlaid with blue and deep down, there’s the ever-present hum of the latent power that resides within her.

Something about her presence makes Kasumi falter. A tear pricks and the armor around her heart cracks. Her bravado crumbles with the slip of her shoulders. She feels like a little girl, desperate for her parents to come home, terrified that they won’t.

Her tortured query cuts through the heavy silence. “What if it doesn’t want me?”

Allura doesn’t look at her. Instead, her bright Altean eyes stare up at the lion, running over every line, every panel. It was Allura’s father that had created the lions and although Allura had piloted the blue lion for years, it wasn’t a bond that had come easily.

“Kasumi,” Allura sighs and it’s then that Kasumi tears her gaze away from the lion and turns it towards the princess. She has no planet now, no people to rule, but she still moves with the quiet grace belonging to royalty. It’s her eyes that catch her and hold her. “You must prepare yourself for the possibility. A blood line is not a guarantee of succession. It is a lesson I know better than most.”

Kasumi’s eyes flicker away. Back to the lion. Her heart feels so heavy in her chest.

It all comes down to this. All her training, all her hard work to follow in her father’s footsteps. All the arguments insisting she was ready when they insisted she wasn’t. Her inner fury that they had left her behind on that last mission, the pain that lingered when they didn’t come back and the knowledge that her last words to them had been frustrated and waspish.

There had been jealousy too, that they always chose each other, sometimes even over their offspring.

“It used to talk to me when I was a child,” Kasumi swallows against the guilt. “In my dreams. It was always there, hovering at the edges. I didn’t know it wasn’t normal.”

If Allura is surprised, she doesn’t show it. She takes one of Kasumi’s hands and cradles it in her own. Kasumi’s hand is pale against Allura’s rich skin tone. Pale and wan and weak.

“Both of your parents spent considerable time as the black lion’s paladins,” Allura tells her quietly. Her eyes are a piercing blue, deep hues of the sparkling shoreline back on Earth. It seems fitting she was the blue lion’s paladin, Kasumi thinks distantly. There was blue all around Allura. “And you were possibly conceived in it’s belly. There is a very real chance that the Black lion thinks of you as her own.”

A shift of movement catches her eye. Al falls into step beside his mother, an as familiar face to her as her own. “Your papa piloted it,” he tells her calmly. She doesn’t need him to expand on the story but he does anyway. “When he was still the red lion’s paladin. He did it to save your father.”

Kasumi’s heart thuds painfully against her rib cage. “But that doesn’t mean that _I_ will be able pilot it.”

 “No,” Allura says quietly. Her gaze shifts over Kasumi’s shoulder. “But unless you try, you won’t ever know.”

* * *

The lion’s controls are dull, the screens black and vacant. It smells faintly dusty, as though the lion has sat for ten thousand years and not mere months. She stands behind the seat, her hands shaking with the weight of the helmet in her grasp. It feels wrong to have it, so she sets it aside.

She still can’t bring herself to sit.

It’s not the first time she’s been here. The lion’s cockpit was familiar to her as anything else but it’s the first time she’s been here without her papa at her back. Even her father doesn’t come in here, confessing to her papa once when they thought she’d been out of earshot that by coming too close he was worried about falling back into the Black lion’s grasp. The lion had guarded his essence for so long, sometimes he had dreams he wasn’t entirely free of her.

But now, in the silent cockpit, the pilot’s seat looms impossibly large. She imagines her papa beside her, replay’s her father’s encouraging tones in her mind and forces one foot, then another. When she finally sits, she has the odd sensation of the lion curling around her but the sensation too dull and too muted to be sure if it was even real.

The controls lay dark and dormant and she feels like a tiny thing under the weight of all its history.

Her father had died in this seat.

Her papa had saved him in this seat.

She swallows, willing her hands to stop shaking. The control sticks lay idle, just out of her reach. She only needs to lean forward to place her hands on them but once again she’s paralysed by the fear.

Fear of not being worthy. Fears of despite knowing who her parents were, _she_ would still be found lacking.

Fear that her only chance to find them might never come to pass.

Fear that she might let them down.

The weight of their legacy is a heavy thing.

“Please,” she whispers into the darkness, their faces playing on a loop behind her eyes. “Please help me find them.”

A moment ticks over. The darkness reigns and the lion doesn’t respond. Something akin to panic grips her throat.

_You can do this, Kasumi. Patience yields focus._

His voice rumbles so loudly in her mind she can’t stop the sob that falls from her chest.

“Dad,” she cries, hunching over in the seat. The lion is ignoring her. The controls stay dark. “Dad, I need to find you. I can’t do this on my own. I’m not ready. The universe isn’t ready. We need you. I need you.”

The lion stay stubbornly dark. Another voice echoes in her mind.

_Keep going! I know you can do this. You have to fight!_

“Papa,” she gasps. She closes her eyes as a tear escapes, trailing a cool line down one cheek. “Help me. I can’t do this without you.”

Without warning, the world around her tilts. The solid form of the pilot seat at her back dissipates in a spray of star dust. The lion fades away, the hangar and the base melts into a nebula of swirling purples and blacks. Her boots are planted but the lights shimmer under her feet.  The sparkling horizons are endless, and a stuttering echo of a laugh catches her ears as it skitters past.

A laugh she recognizes. A laugh that belongs to her father.

“Dad!”

She whirls in the expanse, the dark trying to crowd in even as the pinpricks of light beat it back. She feels like she’s in space, her body light as though floating through spinning galaxies but her legs are gripped by the smoky black.  There’s light in the distance, circlets of visions that scream towards too fast for her to understand before the voices start, laying over themselves in haunting echoes as pockets of scenes like staticky tv’s glide past in front of her.

Each vision is one from her childhood. Laughing with her father as she hangs off his floating arm as a toddler, learning to write her name alongside her papa’s in his sketchpad, squealing as they dance barefoot in the kitchen, singing cheesy pop songs together until they’re breathless from laughter. Other scenes too, the arguments with her papa when her temper got too much, the way they would rub and spark so easily against each other until her father would step in to calm them both.

Then there was her obaa, her purple skin and stipes a constant source of fascination to a tiny Kasumi, until at three years old she’d cried for a week because she didn’t have her grandmother’s lavender skin, pretty stripes or her soft fur.

Visions too of the space wolf, her loyal protector for so many years until her obaa had returned to the blades as she grew older. He watched over her as she slept, chased her in the halls, drooled on her back as he read.

The visions shift, until she becomes smaller, younger, until even her parents start to look different. The wide scar on her papa’s cheek disappears, her father’s hair is no longer all silver. They look younger, and the realisation dawns that these are glimpses of a life before her time. Before her parents had come together as more than friends, before Zarkon had relinquished his grip on the universe, before Voltron had found it’s power.  The visions start coming too fast and too violent for her to understand.

“Stop,” she cries out. She throws her arms across her head but it doesn’t stop their voices. It hurts now. It hurts to hear their voices, younger, softer. Scared. “Why are you showing me all this?”

A new voice echoes along the plane she stands on and the stars shift and swirl around her.

_The rift._

The voice stutters deep, almost not a voice at all. It’s echoed by her parent’ tones, low and rough and urgent.

And then… silence. The stars fade and the seat at her back becomes corporeal once again. Her eyes open, and the dull panels of the black lion’s control panels greet her once again.

“Please,” she begs one more time. “I can’t do this without them. I can’t do this without _you_.”

* * *

Al grabs his arm when the lion shifts on its heavy metallic claws and draws up. Lance has seen it do this before and his heart sinks with the realisation.

Beside him, his wife sighs.

“It would appear the lion has chosen a new paladin,” she says softly.  “The mantle has been passed to a new generation.”

The lion settles and its maw pops open. In its mouth, Kasumi strides down the stairs, Keith’s helmet under one arm and a braid tossed carelessly over her shoulder. It’s her face that makes Lance’s breath catch and for a heartbeat, he needs to blink away a memory.

Then his heart falls out of his chest and onto the floor, sinking through the metal surface and into the vacuum of space beyond.

“Allura,” he croaks around the lump of foreboding that sits in his throat. He turns to his wife, desperate for an answer he’s not sure she can give.  “Does… does this mean they’re they really gone?”

There’s a shimmer to her eyes.  “I don’t know.”

A cold finger of dread draws it’s claw down his spine when his son suddenly steps around him and whoops loudly in excitement. Al runs to Kasumi, skidding to a halt in front of her.

“Kas! Kas! Kas, it accepted you! The black lion accepted you as it’s paladin!”

Kasumi lifts her head and her eyes lock with Lance over Al’s shoulder. In that moment, she looks so much like Keith he feels like he’s seventeen again.

“Yes,” she says, her voice as cold and as sharp as the blade Keith carried around for so long.

“So?” Al flutters around her in excitement and Lance wants to drag him aside.

He knows. He knows just as his own heart knows the absence of the red lion’s purr what it means. Allura’s words haunt him.

_A new generation._

Al stares at her. “What are you going to do?”

Kasumi turns and lifts her chin, staring up at the lion. It watches her back, silent and waiting. Her chin juts out with determination.

“I’m going to find my parents.”

* * *

 

art by [Seiteki9](http://seiteki9.tumblr.com/post/180701556074/request-from-my-darling-friend-flashedarrow) <3


	4. Kasumi: Legacy - part 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this AU is now my s8 canon because seriously, fuck that guy
> 
> this is for my darling Sei <3

_“I don’t want to fight anymore!” she sobs, seven years old and chest heaving with exertion. There are tears behind her eyes and a sting in her nose she tries vainly to struggle against. She can’t show weakness. She’s strong, but she’s tired. “Papa!”_

_Her papa drags the dull blade against the floor. “Kasumi. Again.”_

_“No!”_

_She starts to cry then, just as the training deck doors side open and a welcomed figure strides in. His voice is rough when he takes in the scene. Rough, and faintly concerned._

_“Keith,” he says and it’s all her papa needs to straighten up and turn towards his husband. Her dad’s eyes glitter. “That’s enough.”_

_“No,” her papa shakes his head. “It’s not.”_

_“Keith,” her father says again, in that tone that makes her papa hiss under his breath. Kasumi drops the practice blade with a clatter and bolts on shaky legs right into her father’s chest. She hears it only faintly over the thud of his heart. “Keith, she’s only seven. This is too much.”_

_There’s a beat of quiet and then her papa answers in a voice she doesn’t recognise. A voice that sounds like it’s been torn from the very depths of his heart._

_“This might save her one day.”_

 

* * *

Hunk is a big man. Big but gentle, except when he’s called on to defend his own.

“No, this is crazy!”

He slams his wide palms onto the table, brown fingers splayed wide and dark hair falling over his eyes. “This is crazy,” he says again, his eyes full of fear. “Didn’t we risk our lives again and again so that our kids wouldn’t have to do this? So they wouldn’t have to become paladins of the Voltron lions?”

Kasumi stares at a fixed point beyond his head.

“I don’t need the Voltron,” she states calmly, trying her best to mimic the tones of her father when he had stood at the pulpit and addressed the universe time and time again. “I only need the Black lion, and it’s accepted me as it’s paladin.”

Hunk expression twists further. He appears to be on the brink of tears. “Kas,” he implores, his voice cracking. “They wouldn’t have wanted this for you.”

She’s conscious of the other eyes on them, Lance and Allura, Al and Pidge. The wide screen glows orange behind them. Her lips harden into a line and her eyes flash.

“Then they should have thought of that before they left.”

 

* * *

 

_Al is almost two years old when Keith tracks him down in the one of the Atlas’s lower decks. His daughter Kasumi is almost five and she was a beautiful and courageous little girl. Keith keeps her close, determined to be the parent he never had after his father passed but fatherhood and marriage mellows out the Leader of Voltron. He smiles more, he jokes more. He looks at Lance like they’re the best of friends._

_“Lance.”_

_Lance sets Al down and he toddles after her without hesitation. He’s almost all Allura, shaggy silver locks and bright blue eyes. His skin tone sits neatly in the middle of his and Allura’s but Lance likes to think he has his dad’s bone structure. Just one little thing aside from his only slightly pointed ears to mark him as part human. Even pale blue markings sit at the corners of his eyes._

_“Hey, Keith. What’s up?”_

_Keith doesn’t look at him, his eyes on his daughter. He watches her like a hawk but his expression is soft. Sometimes it makes Lance look twice. Keith’s face changes when he looks at her. The same way it changes when he looks at Shiro. His twin suns that he sets his orbit around._

_Lance shifts his gaze to his son and thinks of his wife. He thought he knew what love was before he stepped foot into the blue lion that fateful day. But he didn’t. Not really. Not like this._

_“I wanted to talk to you about something.”_

_Lance tries to hide his surprise. “What’s wrong? Has there been a sighting?”_

_“No,” Keith shakes his head. His hair is tied back now, no longer something Lance can tease him about although not for lack of trying. “I wanted… I wanted to ask… if you-“ Keith looks like he’s struggling to get the words out.  “If you would be her guardian. If something were to happen to me or Shiro.”_

_It takes Lance a long moment to put together a response beyond the lump at the back of his throat._

_“Nothing’s going to happen to you or Shiro,” Lance manages to say, shaking his head. “Honerva is a ghost. No one has seen her or her mechs since we defeated the one on Earth.”_

_He doesn’t know if it’s the right answer and realises it’s not when Keith’s expression shifts into a faint frown and he shakes his head. Lance wants to slap himself. He was Keith’s right hand, it was his job not to bullshit him. It was to back him, and reign him in if necessary._

_“I mean,” he starts again, before sighing in frustration. The look Keith throws him makes him want to start over. “Is there something else you know?”_

_“No,” Keith says. The kids play, Kasumi squealing as Al toddles after her, his silver hair flying and his mouth open in a toothy grin. “But I don’t want what happened to me to happen to her should the worse happen.”_

_“What happe- oh.”_

_“She knows you,” Keith continues as though he hasn’t spoken.  “She knows Al and Allura. When my father died, they took me away from everything I knew. I even had a dog, but I never saw him again after-”_

_Keith’s lips get tight. He sets his gaze on Lance now. Sharp and as commanding as ever, but with a hint of vulnerability there too._

_As if Lance could ever turn him down._

_“You’ll… You’ll love her?” Keith whispers uncertainly._

_Lance lays a hand on Keith’s shoulder. “I already do.”_

 

* * *

 

His parents are first to trail out of the room, his father leading a clearly distressed Hunk out into the hall. His mother pauses in the doorway and glances back over her shoulder at him where he waits beside Kasumi. He nods once and she turns away, her expression troubled.

Silence echoes in the chamber, heavy with expectation. He just has to wait her out. He was better in the quiet than she was. It’s barely a moment before she rounds on him, braid flying over one shoulder and eyes sparking dangerously.

Her demand is a snarl.

_“What?”_

He doesn’t flinch under her fire. He’s known her too long for that. His earliest memories are toddling after her on chubby thighs through the halls of the Atlas and yanking playfully on her dark hair.

“You can’t do this alone, you know.”

He widens his stance and folds his arms across his chest but he keeps it loose. Casual. They’re both part human but he sometimes wonders if the galra and altean parts of their natures will always be at odds.

“The hell I can’t,” she snaps back.

Her shoulders snap rigidly, spine straight. She’s tall to start with but the tautness of her spine makes her taller. She’s leaning into her papa’s fierce reputation these days, letting the path he laid before her be the place she treads her feet. She wears the ferociousness well, but it’s wasted on him.

“Put away your fangs,” he tells her calmly, glancing away. His heart aches for her. For the pain and the loss she’s suffering in her parents absence. For the boots she’s trying so desperately to fill.

She glares at him then shifts to mimic his pose. She’s defensive. Angry.

Hurting.

“You’d better start talking,” she tells him in a voice he pretends doesn’t waver. She pretends too, and her chin lifts ever so slightly.

Al swallows and drops his arms. He answers her with a bravery he doesn’t quite feel.

“You need an altean to get you into the quintessence field,” he says quietly. He waits a beat, long enough for the pieces to fall into place around her shattered heart.

“Unless you plan on opening another rip in the space time fabric and destroy the universe our parents worked so hard to save.”

 

* * *

 

_The final preparations for the Atlas to depart Earth are underway and despite the long, exhausting list of work to do, Shiro has only one thing on his mind._

_“Are you sure about this, Keith? A battlecruiser isn’t the place for a toddler.”_

_Keith doesn’t unfold the arms held tight across his chest. There’s a mutinous set to his jaw that Shiro knows well. He doesn’t want to fight him on this, not really, but he feels that he needs to be the voice of reason._

_“I’m not leaving her behind,” Keith says firmly. His eye glints. There’s more meaning laced between the spaces of his words than his simple statement and Shiro knows him well enough he doesn’t have to search for their truth._

_Not left behind. Not like I was._

_Shiro takes a step forward. He eases his way into Keith’s space and lifts a hand, his human one that glints with a deep gold band. The twin to the one on Keith’s finger. He lays his hand against Keith’s shoulder, then his hand travels upwards and cups Keith’s cheek._

_Keith immediately sinks into his touch, the tension and fire unravelling under Shiro’s hand. He’s always been the only one that can soothe Keith’s fire. The only one, except maybe Krolia, that Keith will completely and utterly bare his throat for._

_“If that’s what you want-“_

_“I won’t let her be alone,” Keith tells him and his voice cracks with the pain of a lonely childhood._

_“She never will be,” Shiro whispers back. He tugs Keith into his arms. “We’ll always be with her.”_

 

* * *

 

“Commander Griffin.”

James’s steps falter at that commanding tone, so much like her father’s. He’s not sure if she realises how much of Keith she has in her, and how much of his formidable reputation she leans against for her own means. She’s shrewd, Kasumi, well aware of her position amongst those in power of the Voltron coalition.

But even the power of the only child of Admiral Shirogane and the Leader of Voltron was merely a smoke screen. She was as much shackled by her position as she was liberated by it.

“Kasumi,” James says with a curt nod. He doesn’t need to look twice to recognize that twist her to her lips and that spark in her eyes. Now the truth was common knowledge of Keith’s galra heritage, there was a part of Griffin who wondered how he never saw it earlier. Eyes a little too keen, that unnatural hue, teeth a little too sharp. There was a lethalness about her that seemed more pronounced but unlike Keith, she embraced it eagerly. “What can I do for you?”

There’s a shift across her face, a subtle change. Surprise maybe. She’d come expecting a fight and now she wasn’t going to find one.

“I need access to the red lion’s hangar bay.”

Rumours of her connection with the Black lion had already reached him. He’s not as surprised as he should be by her demand. He watches her with narrowed eyes. The spark in them tonight reminds him of her father, back in the days James had worn a black eye from Keith’s punch for a week.

“Do you now?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“I’m going after my parents.”

Her statement is accompanied by a lift of her chin. Her long braid snakes over one shoulder but it’s the way she won’t meet his eye that’s most telling.

It’s a strange kind of echo to live through.

He remembers what it was like to be scared. For all her bluster, she’s as young as he was the day the galra invaded Earth. Younger, really. Hiding behind a fierce determination, a fierce independence that made her dark eyes snap firmly together and her lips form a tight line. The moment he was called to action would be forever etched into his psyche. He wonders if this is hers.

“God,” he hears himself say, his head full of memories he hadn’t thought about in years. “You look just like him.”

She blinks, his words obviously catching her by surprise.

“I hear that a lot,” she mutters. “You’ll have to be more specific.”

James can’t hide the dry chuckle at her hard tone. She looks like Keith but she sounds like Shiro.

“Your pop. Keith. I knew him… before… before all this.”

She gives him a look that borders on weary. “At the garrison. I know.”

“No,” he shakes his head, “Before that. When we were just kids at a local public school. Before he even knew Shiro.” James can’t help the way the corner of his mouth turned up. If anyone had told him back then he’d be standing in a spaceship in another galaxy talking to the daughter of his number one rival and his biggest hero, he would have laughed himself stupid. “I was there that day, you know. When they met. I should have realised, the day Keith stole that car and-“

“What? He stole a car?”

“Yes,” James laughs wryly. “I gather he never told you that story.”

For a brief heartbeat, she looks delighted. Delighted she’d inadvertently stumbled across a prime piece of information she could no doubt use as leverage against her father. Keith would be pissed if he knew James had told her. But then the delight fades instantly, the wave crashing over her that her parents were missing, and leaving nothing but devastation in its wake.

It feels cruel almost, to have been the one to tell her.

“Maybe you weren’t supposed to know,” he says quietly.

“No,” she frowns, her expression shifting. She lets out a forced laugh but it sounds wrong. It’s too broken. “And he got so mad at me for taking that shuttle for a joyride once-“

Her voice cuts off and she blinks rapidly, fighting back the tears he can see shimmering in her eyes. She’s stubborn like Keith, he thinks for the hundredth time. He reaches out to grasp her shoulder and squeezes tight.

“Tell Keith he’s more than welcome to punch me in the face like old times for telling you about it when he gets back.”

 

* * *

 

_“Okay,” Shiro laughs, pushing the bowl of green beans towards Kasumi._

_She pulls a face and pushes it back._

_“Okay,” he says with gentle sternness, and pushes the bowl back towards her with a determined frown._

_Keith watches the subtle battle of wills hiding a smile on his lips._

_“High low,” Shiro says. “Kas, you start.”_

_“Ugh, dad I don’t want the green stuff!”_

_“Kas, eat your vegetables.”_

_Kasumi swings her head around at Keith, dark ponytail flying. She narrows her silver-grey eyes and jabs a finger at his plate. “You’re not eating them!”_

_“I’m a grown up, I don’t have to.”_

_“Dad!”_

_“Kasumi,” Shiro gives his husband an exasperated look. “Don’t worry about your papa, just eat your vegetables please.”_

_“Ugh, okay but papa has to start.”_

_Keith raises an eyebrow. “Do I now?”_

_“Yeah,” Kasumi grins at him, triumphantly. She stabs a green bean with her fork and shoves it in her mouth._

_Keith exchanges a glance with Shiro. His lips twitch._

_“Okay, low was having to read the five reports Coran dropped on my desk this morning.”_

_“Boring!” Kas chirps. She scoffs another green bean like she’s never eaten before._

_“That’s not bad as far as lows go,” Shiro chuckles quietly._

_“No, not like some others we’ve had.”_

_“High! High!”_

_Keith lays his fork down on the table and stands up.  “High point? It would have to be this.”_

_He walks around the table and loops his arms around Shiro’s shoulders, planting a kiss to his cheek._

_Shiro chuckles quietly, and turns to steal another kiss. “Funny, that’s mine too,” he murmurs, just as Kasumi pretends to gag at the table._

_“I bet I know what your high point is, Kas,” Shiro tells her. She looks at them suspiciously._

_“What?”_

_It’s too late to move by the time she realises what the quickly exchanged grin between her parents means and a moment later she finds herself tangled up and smooched on each cheek._

_“Uughgh, you guys are so gross!”_

 

* * *

 

Kasumi falls out of the vision with a thud, blinking away as the word flashes white then fades back into colour. Her cheeks are wet and Al is crouching in front of her. His blue eyes are sharp with concern.

“Kas, are you okay? You zoned out for a minute there.”

It takes her a moment to shake off the dream, but mostly because she didn’t want to. She’d felt the love in that moment, that special bond between her parents, and the love they’d turned on her. No matter her place in this world, she knew they loved her.

“Yeah,” she croaks out even though her heart breaks. “I’m fine.”

Al doesn’t seem convinced. He flutters about her, trying to help her back to her feet but he presses too close and she shoves him away with an irritated huff.

He steps back, eyes shadowed. She can feel the reproach emanating from him like a black cloud.

“That’s not the first time that’s happened, is it?”

She considers lying briefly, before realising Al would see through her. She shakes her head instead. “No, but that was the most… vivid.”

He looks at her calmly. He has the bluest eyes she’s ever seen in a human face. “Visions?” he asks softly.

“Memories,” she answers after a moment. “They’re memories but… they’re not all mine.”

Al frowns at that. “What do you mean?”

She sighs and rubs her head. A dull ache has started to thud there. “I don’t know but… I think they’re trying to tell me something?”

“The… memories?” Al cocks his head, confusion rampant on his face.

“No. My parents.”


	5. Kasumi: Legacy - part 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> continuing with this AU. Kas & Al have kind of taken over my brain along with allurance and sheith these days.

The shuttle docks with little fanfare, late in the night cycle of the base but Al is awake and waiting with Kasumi as she paces the corridors outside the hangar bay.

“ _Baasan_ will know,” she says.

Al sighs. He stares at the hangar doors. “Her son is missing, do you really think she’s going to let her granddaughter disappear too?”

Kasumi ignores that. She pivots sharply on one heel and strides towards the doorway. “She won’t stop me. She’ll understand that I need to do this. She has to.”

“Will she understand you want to go without her? Why call her here if you’re not going to take her with you?”

She stops and rounds on him. Her eyes glitter like steel. “The Black lion knows where they are.”

Kasumi is intimidating when she’s like this, focused with a single-minded clarity that borders on the obsessive. He wonders privately if she’s spiraling, if the pressure of the expectations placed on her narrow shoulders are too much.

He watches her as she paces and holds his worries inside him. He’ll follow her to the ends of the universe if he has to. He couldn’t do anything less. 

She’s strong, and she’s stubborn… but she also has a plan.

 

* * *

 

Kasumi spins the blade with lethal speed, twirling it in a wide arc until her fingers unfurl and it shoots through the open space. It impales a training bot with a spark into the wall and she pants with a satisfied grin on her lips.

“Again!”

A new bot trundles out, but not before a second voice halts the exercise.

“You’re training too hard,” her grandmother tells her. “You will burn out.”

Kasumi tosses her long braid over her shoulder. Her chest heaves and her lips twist in annoyance. “I’m fine.”

“When was the last time you slept?”

Kasumi glares at her grandmother. “When was the last time _you_ did?”

Krolia’s lip curls just as a wet nose presses against Kasumi’s palm. There’s a flash of white and the environment around them changes.

Kas growls low when she recognizes the living quarters she once shared with her parents onboard the Atlas. She whirls, pinning the space wolf with a look.

“Kosmo! Bad dog!”

The space wolf stares at her, tongue lolling out of the side of his mouth. She glares at him for a heartbeat longer before the exhaustion in her limbs catches up and the pain in her chest snatches her breath.

Kosmo presses against her as she crumbles.

“I didn’t want to come back here, Kosmo,” she whispers against his fur. She’s missed him since he’s been with Krolia and the blades, missed the strange smoky scent of his coat, the way his gold eyes always seemed to know just what they were thinking. The way he would curl around her as a child when her parents were away on missions and let her fall asleep to the sound of his heartbeat.

She was eighteen years old but with her arms around his neck, she feels weak and alone.

“I miss them, Kosmo. I have to find them.”

 

* * *

 

_“Doesn’t it bother you?”_

_Keith glances sharply at the commander, standing nearby as Shiro hands out directives to the Atlas crew. James has risen through the ranks quickly, as had most of the human crew. They’ve been working their way through the galaxy for years now, trying to bring stability to the crumbled galra empire, continually vigilant for any hint of Lotor’s return or of the strange mech that had attacked them on Earth._

_So far, there had been nothing._

_Keith tilts his head. “What are you talking about?”_

_James turns slightly, his voice just a murmur. Keith doubts anyone else can hear them. At the front of the room, Shiro and Veronica are still talking. “You’re married, but he orders you around like you’re still a cadet.”_

_A long time ago, James’s comment might have made him see red, but they’ve both grown up since then. He’s better at reading James now, and there’s no taunt in his words. Keith’s marriage to Shiro was a source of curiosity for some, although Keith never understood why. He was good at ignoring the attention._

_He tracks his husband’s form with his gaze, noting the tense line of his shoulders. The frown on his lips. For as much as Shiro relished his command of the Atlas, Keith sometimes longed for a quieter life. Away from the conflict, away from the war without an enemy that still raged._

_“This is tactical,” he answers, his voice low. “There’s no room for egos in this war.”_

_James’s silence is telling, threaded with disbelief. It pricks at Keith in a way that makes him itch for the final say. They were older, but apparently some habits died too hard and this he can’t ignore._

_“Besides,” he mutters. “You’ve never seen how long it takes Shiro to decide on what flavour of ice cream to have for desert.”_

_It’s not until the meeting is over and the room is cleared out that Keith’s husband pins him with an assessing look. Keith narrows his eyes at him._

_“What?”_

_“Can’t decide on what flavour ice cream, huh?” Shiro says with deceptive mildness._

_Keith’s cheeks heat in spite of himself. He coughs lightly and glances away. “You heard that?”_

_“I did.”_

_Keith waits for the chuckle he expects to follow, hoping Shiro finds the humour in it but it doesn’t come. Instead Shiro’s eyes are stormy with something that looks too close to defeat._

_“Shiro? What is it?”_

_It takes a long moment for Shiro to answer._

_“What are we doing, Keith?”_

_Cold trickles down Keith’s back._

_They’re back to this._

_“What we have to do.”_

_Shiro turns to him sadly. What Keith had thought was defeat looks like something else now. Like weariness. They both look the same as they had the day they had returned to earth, some kind of lasting effect of the lion’s quintessence acting like a fountain of youth but their eyes showed the years passing. It felt strange to know that one day their daughter would look older than them._

_“I mean about Kas.”_

_“What about her?”_

_“She had bruises on her arms again, Keith.”_

_“She’s been training. She’s been working hard. You know this.”_

_Shiro turns away. The glow from his shoulder becomes hidden from Keith’s view. Some how it feels like a rebuff, and Keith feels the ache in his gut. In most things, they agreed but in this… Shiro wasn’t so sure._

_“Shiro-“_

_“There has to be a better way. The universe is enjoying a peace it hasn’t experienced for over ten thousand years but we’re raising our daughter as though we’re at war.”_

_“We are at war.”_

_“It’s been ten years now.”_

_There’s a beat of silence, nothing but the hum of the engines around them. It’s true, it’s been ten years since they fell back to earth. Ten years since they found the altean pilot, ten years since she told them of Haggar’s plans._

_They’re tired, but they can’t rest._

_“Honerva is still out there,” Keith says quietly. “She could show up at any time. We have to be ready.”_

_“She may not show up at all. Perhaps she’s with Lotor now.”_

_Keith narrows his eyes at his husband. The words don’t seem right coming out of Shiro’s mouth. “You don’t really believe that, do you?”_

_Shiro pauses, then sighs long and rough. “No, no I don’t, but… Sometimes… Sometimes, I hope.”_

_Keith takes a step closer, reaching out to the man he married in a sunset ceremony so long ago. He’s done his best to shoulder what he can of the leadership but it hasn’t always been easy._

_“You’ve always been the first one to tell me that we have to stay vigilant,” he says quietly against Shiro’s silver hair. “Why the change of heart now?”_

_Shiro’s hands land against his hips, a gentle squeeze before he pulls back. He’s not looking at Keith though, instead he’s studying the tablet on the table. A notification blips._

_“Sometimes I wonder if being a leader and being a parent is really compatible, that’s all.”_

_He nudges the tablet towards Keith. The screen shimmers with the image of their dark haired daughter with Lance and Allura’s seven year old son in a headlock. The two kids were close, the best of friends and the worst of enemies. It was going to hurt to separate them if Allura followed through on her aim to teach Al the secrets of Oriande._

_“Should we do something about this?”  
_

_Keith stares at the image for a moment longer then shrugs lazily. “Nah. I used to do a lot worse to Lance.”_

 

* * *

 

“You can’t do this alone, Kas,” Al says.

He stands to her right, only a step away but his positioning feels too deliberate to be an accident. Her right hand, she realises. Just as his father was to hers.

She shakes her head. “No, Al. This is something I have to do. The lion spoke to me. The visions came to me-“

“You still need someone watching your back. So, I’ll be coming with you.”

Lance speaks up then. “Al, no.”

“Dad, I have to.”

“Neither of you have to do anything! This is crazy.”

They don’t mention the real reason she needs him. The rift. The secrets he’d learned during his training with Allura in Oriande. The paladins had barely escaped with their lives the last time they’d encountered it and that was with Voltron and not just the lions.

Kas looks away as Al argues with his father. It’s almost an echo of the last time she had spoken with her parents. It hurts and she pushes that hurt down, twisting it into rage and determination. She was ready. Al was ready.

Together, they’d do this.

Together, they'll bring her parents back.

 

* * *

 

_Lance hovers outside the hospital room, the smile on his face so wide he thinks his heart might stop from the joy. A son. He has a son. He has a wife and a son and he’s a husband and when his sister laughs and pulls him into her chest, he can’t stop the sob that falls out._

_Everything they fought for. Everything they lost. It was worth it just for this._

_“Congratulations, papa bear,” Veronica murmurs in his ear. “What’s his name?”_

_They hadn’t talked about it, not really, not at the start. They’d been too scared to get attached. The baby was the first of his kind, the first altean human hybrid and it was unchartered territory. Altean gestation was different to human and had they more time, they would have approached the pregnancy with a lot more care and planning._

_As it stood, the baby came to them on the eve of their third wedding anniversary, a surprise and a shock and seeing the way Allura suffered made Lance want to face Zarkon in hand to hand combat a million times over if it would just mean his wife would be okay._

_In public, they presented a brave face. Yes, the pregnancy was progressing well, yes, they were surprised, but happy._

_Privately, Lance held her tightly as Allura sobbed in the dark, soothing away the pains he could, wiping the damp silver strands from her face. In humans, pregnant women glowed. He remembered his brother’s wife with both her pregnancies, radiant with delight and excited for the future. He didn’t know if the discomfort that wracked Allura was an Altean trait, or simply just the trauma Allura’s body had endured over the years as the blue lion’s paladin._

_He had been too frightened of the answer to ask Romelle or Coran._

_“Alfor,” he says to his sister, the name sounding strange in his human mouth but right in his heart. “But we’ll call him Al for short.”_

_Veronica smiles at him and pats his cheek. “It’s perfect.”_

 

* * *

 

The corridor outside the red lion’s hangar bay is supposed to be off limits, but Kas lingers, her papa’s red helmet dangling in her hands and her heart in her throat. She’s not waiting long before she hears the soft pad of booted feet down the hall and the echo of familiar voices.

“It’s not fair, we want to be paladins too!”

“You’re five,” Al says as he rounds the corner. His twin siblings trail behind him. “You can’t be paladins.”

Kas straightens as they approach.

“Kasumi!” one of them yells and Kas finds herself barrelled into with enough force she has to take a step back. She grins down at the twins in spite of herself.

“What’s this about being paladins?” she asks.

“Al says we can’t,” one of them pouts. Mel is named for Allura’s mother and Cora for Allura’s surrogate father and they’re identical in all the ways that count. Sometimes even Kas has trouble telling them apart.

“Al says we can’t, but you are!”

“I told you,” Al says again. He catches Kasumi’s eye, just the smallest hint of an exasperated quirk on his lips. “You’re only five.”

“Yeah,” Kas teases. “How would you even reach the pedals?”

Al’s smile is small, his eyes unusually shadowed. Under one arm, he holds a paladin helmet. His posture is tense and Kas wonders if he is as nervous as she is.

“Blue?” Kasumi raises an eyebrow once the twins have been chased back down the halls and away from the lion’s hangars.

Al looks down self-consciously. There’s no hint of a smile now, just the quiet resolve that had only come once he’d returned from Oriande. His altean heritage weighs heavily on him and he takes his role seriously. The grandson of the last true Altean king was a badge he bore with a silent pride.

Even if there were no more Alteans.

“I wanted to stick with pink, to honour my grandfather and all the people we lost when Altea was destroyed, but... Mom’s armour doesn’t fit me.”

Kasumi considers him silently for a moment. Something licks at the pit of her stomach. Maybe nerves, maybe guilt. She has long since given up trying to decipher the emotions rolling around inside her. Al talks about the Alteans as though he’s forgotten about his human side and it’s a stark reminder of the blood that runs in her veins. Galran blood. Al should be a prince and he would have been, were it not for empire.

She swallows roughly, tucking her sharp nails behind her back. They’re a reminder of the taint of her blood in the face of Al’s Altean pride. Perhaps it was her imagination but even this Altean markings seem brighter today.

“Do they know?”

Al raises cerulean eyes. His answer is hard enough to broker a challenge. “No.”

“Al-“

“It’s fine,” he cuts her off sharply. Sharp enough that his cut almost makes her bleed. “Mom knows enough and she didn’t try to stop me and you know dad won’t ever say a word against her.” Al clutches his helmet a littler tighter. “So we’re good.”

The guilt rolls over her again. “You don’t have to do this, Al.”

The look he gives her stings. “You need me. Besides,” he says, softer now. "I want to. Maybe we were born for this."

He lifts the helmet and slides it onto his head as he walks past her. Kasumi glances towards the heavy sealed doors. On the other side, the Voltron lions wait.

Beyond that, the rift beckons.

 

* * *

 

_Keith can hear his mother’s voice as soon as he enters their quarters. The living space is dimmed but a pale glow filters out of his daughter’s room and he follows it like a beacon._

_He finds them together on the bed. Kasumi is dozing in his mother’s lap as she reads, a familiar story that Keith remembers from his own childhood with his father. Krolia had told him once how his father had taught her to read English when she was pregnant with him, so she could read books to him when he was born. His father had gone into town specifically to purchase some for them and they had been treasured._

_They had also been another thing Keith had lost when his father died._

_He doesn’t know how Krolia has the books now, although he suspects their extended adoptive family on board the Atlas has something to do with it. Perhaps they once belonged to Lance’s niece and nephew, he doesn’t know._

_Not that it matters now._

_She glances up, smiling at him as she turns the page and he slips slightly to her side, taking a seat on the floor, his head against her knee. It’s not easy for her galran tongue to form the English words, but she’s mastered it well._

_She holds his daughter and plays with his hair as she reads._

_He had dreamed of hearing these stories in his mother’s voice once. He closes his eyes and drifts on the sound._

_Some dreams do come true._

 

* * *

 

Lance feels it at the back of his thoughts. It’s a dull scratch, something he hasn’t felt in years.

And it’s wrong.

Without thinking, he launches out of the meeting, ignoring the startled gasps of the Atlas crew, ignoring the way his boots thud against the steel grate floors. He runs for the blue lion’s hangar, his heartbeat bursting in his ears.

He knows what he’ll see before he bursts in but it doesn’t stop him from crying out.

“Al? Al! Al, get out of there right now!”

He hasn’t felt this crushing sense of loss and despair since the first time Blue flung up her shield against him. The buzzing hurts in places it shouldn’t. Deep inside his chest, right in his soul.

His hands splay against the shimmering blue shield. Inside, the blue lion raises up.

Fear rages through him.

“Al, stop! You can’t do this!”

His son’s voice echoes out of the blue lion. “I’m sorry, Dad, I have to do this.”

“No. No, you don’t! Get out of there right now!”

“Dad, I have to help her.”

“You’re eighteen years old! You’re too young-“

The blue lion swings its head, lowering down. His son’s voice rings out through the hangar.

“Kind of rich coming from you, Dad. I’m older now than when you first became a paladin.”

“That’s different!” Lance thumps his hand against the shield. A ripple of blue light shimmers out. He ignores the spark of pain that shoots up his arm.

“Yeah, it is. Different because unlike you, I was raised for this.”

Lance freezes and the blue lion’s head swings up. No. No, he doesn’t want this. This isn’t right. Not Al. No, Allura has already lost too much. He won’t let her lose her son too.

The familiar scratch along the back of his mind feels apologetic now. Fleeting. Lance chases after it.

“Blue? Blue! Blue, please, that’s my son in there!”

The blue lion lifts off, the shield shimmers and fades.

“Blue!” Lance screams again, but the lion doesn’t listen to him. And why would it, Blue hasn’t listened to him in years. He sinks to his knees, begging. “Come on, Blue, don’t let him do this, please.”

There’s a rush of wind, a roar that sounds like the Black lion and then Lance is alone.

His son is gone.

**Author's Note:**

> I took the baby name from one of my fav Mass Effect characters <3


End file.
